


Not a big Adventure

by ParallelStriped (Zebra)



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Gen, Parallelsfic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2011-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zebra/pseuds/ParallelStriped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Chihiro's other visits to the spirit world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a big Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).



The shadows were moving again in the water.

Just like they were yesterday and the day before yesterday.

Just like yesterday and the day before yesterday, Chihiro decided against asking Haku what these shadows were. There was still time until she had to return to the human world. The shadows in the water she would keep as the mystery to solve on the last day of her visit to this world.

For now she sat on top of a hill next to Yubaba's bathing house, the very hill on which the pigsties stood where her parents had been kept.

Chihiro enjoyed the relative quiet around her.

It was a quiet one could never experience in the city or even in the suburb she and her parents had moved to on that fateful day years ago. Out there, in the human world, there always was the noise of machinery and people. Here, if one stayed away from the beehive-like bathing house, there was only the wind whispering in the trees and grasses, the gentle lapping of the wave and occasionally the rumbling of the train.

And, there was Haku's soft breathing.

She was leaning against his flank and could feel him moving with every calm breath he took.

If she turned just like that, she could hear his heart beating beneath his scaly hide, his fur tickling her brow.

Days like these were deeply treasure by Chihiro, days when she could sit atop a hill, leaning against Haku, and just watch the land without a worry in the world. Soon she would go to university and the entrance to the spirit world would be much farther away than a fifteen minute trip by bike.

She was missing everybody already.

Back when she left that first time, she had never expected to feel Haku's fur so soft and fresh like a stream of water against her skin again. She had moved into her new life and all but forgotten about the entrance to the spirit world so close to her new home.  
There had only been those dreams about water rushing all around her, not drowning her, but protecting and guiding her.

And then, the last day of elementary school she had found a shiny purple hair band in her drawer and every memory had come back.

She had been afraid to go back and see whether she could enter the spirit world again.

Chihiro had spend long days just looking at the stone statues along the forgotten path, looking at the entrance.

Then, still not daring to enter, she had looked up the Kohaku river. Haku had said that he would return home after all.

There was no river which had suddenly reappeared and Chihiro was sure she would have heard about it before, if there had been.

But there was news of a different kind. It had started not long after Chihiro's return. The people living in the house erected above the filled-in Kohaku river had begun to complain about wet floors and the streets never drying.

The river was no longer content to simply be water in the drainage system. It was coming back, slowly and with steady force.

Chihiro had visited the former river then, but no Haku had appeared there to her.

Her parents had been worried that first year of junior high school. She had been so preoccupied with her experiences in the spirit world that her marks had slipped. Three years to the day of her first unwitting trip, she had put on the shiny red hair band the others had made as a talisman and had gone to the spirit world again.

Haku had found her then.

They had talked and reminiscenced.

She had gone back often ever since, visiting with Haku and all her other friends. She had even visited Yubaba again, who had tried to trick her into another contract, but took it in good humor when she was denied.

She had visited places she had never imagined before, had seen the changes in the places she knew.

The far away town had grown closer to the bathing house, its buildings taller. There was a second set of tracks intersecting at an angle with old tracks near the bathing house.

Haku had promised to show her tomorrow where that new set of tracks led, but today they were to go to a place Chihiro knew already and liked to revisit.

Today they were expected at Zeniba's farm.

She only had to wait for her snoozing dragon to awaken from his nab, and then they would be off with all the speed of a rushing wild river.  


* * *

"Welcome, my child. It's so good to see you again. Good day, Haku."

"Good day, Zeniba."

She had no sooner greeted Zeniba then she was whisked away by No-Face to the garden. Chihiro followed him all too happily. Trying to impress her with well-groomed fields and strong plants was a lot better than trying to impress her with gold and gluttony.

No-Face had worked at Zeniba's all those years, an arrangement which suited all. Zeniba had a dedicated worker instead of having to employ the mischievous fox spirits living in the nearby woods. And No-Face had a place to stay in a world where no one wanted such a dangerous spirit close by.

The fields showed the care with which they had been showered: long rows of strong-leaved daikon here and thick naganegi stalks there, tall and flowering burdock and multi-colored radish there.

No-Face showed her all of them.

Chihiro always marvelled how No-Face, who was such a whispy and immaterial spirit, could manage all the hard work required to maintain the fields.

What No-Face couldn't achieve with strength, No-Face achieved with determination and persistence, working from dawn till dusk to bask in the praise for all the well-grown produce.

No-Face was also anything but a passive companion on these tours, ah-ing and uh-ing over the carrots and azuki beans, hurrying her along to the newest shiso batches. And while No-Face couldn't talk in words, the spirit still managed well enough to express the tribulations faced, the disappointment when the cultivation of wasabi just proved impossible in Zeniba's garden, and the elated joy when the new piglets were born. Real piglets from real pigs, not enchanted parents or servants.

Chihiro played with the piglets while No-Face fed the adult pigs, keeping in mind that the little squealing bundles would become bacon and roast for Yubaba's bathing house. While Yubaba raised many pigs in her own stables and even had vast vegetable fields, Zeniba's garden was still renowned far and wide for the exceptional quality of its produce.

And this was likely what kept Haku and Zeniba busy in the cottage. Yubaba fed the food produced at the bathing house to the average guests and her workers. The most famous and generous guests were only given food of the highest quality, which for many vegetables meant buying straight from Zeniba. But since the sisters still didn't get along, Haku served as a go-between. He was the only one both trusted to be fair to each of them, neither having Yubaba pay more than the food was worth, nor Zeniba not getting all her due.

Chihiro was curious to see what would happen when the Kohaku river had fully re-emerged and its god returned to it.

But that was still some time in the future and for now No-Face demanded her attention. Miming for her to be quiet, he led her to a bushy sugi near the outer fence.

There among the branches hung one of the living lanterns and as Chihiro looked closer, she saw many little lanterns hanging on the smaller branches.

She knew that there were living lanterns growing from time to time in Zeniba's garden, although their creation still eluded her. They had been one of the wonders she had found on an earlier trip, but till now she had only ever seen them when they had grown big enough to finally move into the world and find a place of their own to light.

Sure, sometimes when it had gotten dark there had been little flickering clouds of light spots in a tree or bush, much too unmoving to be fireflies, yet she had never seen lanterns that were still so small, their "glass" panes still milky and opaque.

While it was always great to see the big and bustling cities of the spirit world or explore a dark mysterious forest with a pack of wolf spirits and a river god, she most enjoyed the quiet little wonders one could so easily overlook.

Chihiro hugged No-Face in delight.  


☙End❧

* * *

  


**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank Shayheyred for betaing.


End file.
